Coming Home
by Clara-Zeklos
Summary: The returning of the Azkaban prisoners at home after the first breakout. One-shot.


**_Here, weary traveller, rest your wand_**  
**_Sleep the journey from your eyes..._**

It was an unusually rainy night for this time of the year. Narcissa could hear the raindrops falling on the windows and it sounded as if someone was trying to break the walls of the Manor. She tried to convince herself that there was no such thing. Theonly people here now were Lucius somewhere up the stairs and her. With a sigh, she looked back at her book. It was just her imagining things.

But pretty soon the noises outside became way too realistic to be just the rain.

Someone was trying really hard to enter through the front doors. The woman could hear that the door outside was shaken, kicked and other stuff like that, but the voice kept repeating stubbornly _State your purpose!_

"Cissa, would you see who is it, please?" she heard Lucius shouting from his office up the stairs. So it wasn't just her making things up. arcissa rolled her eyes and left on the table the book she was reading on the dim light from the candles. She couldn't get a moment for a rest.

"Sure." she murmured. Obviously the charmed door was refusing to let in the visitors and she could hear a somewhat familiar man's voice shouting at it - she couldn't quite remember the man it belinged to, but she was sure she had met him before. Cissy sighed exasperatedly. Won't they learn? All the visitors they had, mostly relatives and friends, and sometimes people from the ministry. The door is not letting you in if you shout at it. You just have to give it a reason _why_ you want to get in and leave it consider that reason in peace.

"Open." she whispered and the doors swung open at her command. At first, nothing happened. Silence fell over the Manor and the garden.

And then, Narcissa could hear people shouting excitedly and even someone laughing. She frowned. It was almost midnight. And the people who visited the Manor by this time of the day weren['t exactly the happiest ones. Well not usually. Sometimes Muggles from the village down the hill were coming to ask them for money - everyone, even the Muggles, knew that they had money to give.

But no Muggle in their right mind would argue with the charmed doors. Even _they_ weren't idiotic enough to try to enter by force into the Malfoy Manor.

"Cissy!" she heard someone calling her somewhere in the fog that was all around in the garden the last months. A deep frown passed through her face once again. It was a woman's voice. A really familliar one, too, but one she hadn't heard for fourteen years. A one she had lost hope she'd hear ever again. Because it was too good to be true.

"Cissy! It's me! We're free, Cissy! We finally did it!"

Narcissa stared in disbelief at Bellatrix who was now running at her, taking her in her tight embrace, and the younger woman felt dark messy curls falling all over her shoulders as she wrapped her arms around Bella, hesitating. The smell of red wine and dark chocolate hit Narcissa as suddenly as her sister's sudden appearing on the doors of the Manor - and that was what convinced her the most that she wasn't dreaming.

"B-Bella? But how?..." she tried to ask but then the man whose voice she had heard at the door, spoke again.

"With the help of anyone but your loving husband." she heard Rodolphus' voice as he appeared too, along with his brother Rabastan, Antonin Dolohov, the younger Rosier, the brother of Evan who got killed in the war - all of them prisoners in Azkaban till now, and a few more men she recognized, but for what she knew, they were free - Nott, McNair, Crabbe, Goyle... "Of course, he decided that it would be more reasonable to weasel out of it all. Like he always does." The read-haired man said darkly. His brother rolled his eyes, annoyed.

"Now, now, Rod." Rabastan said. When Cissy saw him, she tried to sneak out from Bella's embrace and went to hug the younger Lestrange brother.

"Rab!" she exclaimed, wrapping her arms around him. The man seemed quite surprised by her reaction - she thought he shouldn't be, though - at school, she had no friend closer than him. "How did you... Who..." Cissy obviously had an unabillity to finish her sentences tonight.

"Because He helped us, Cissy." Bella whispered almost frantically. Narcissa's eyes started to fill with tears. Even though she was so smart and sometimes so doubtful, putting everything in question, Bella started to sound like a child when she talked about the Dark Lord. These were the only moments she seemed truly happy, as if she was blessed, no matter how much time she had suffered for her master. "I was right, Cissy, I was right all along! He wasn't dead and now we're going to be rewarded for our loyality."

Rodolphus didn't seem as content as his wife, but he didn't say anything about it. Actually, he looked rather tired around the garden. Rabastan, however, still holding a bit surprisedly Narcissa in his arms as if he still wasn't sure where her burst of feelings came from, made a small sound that was almost a moan.

"Oh, Rab, you were so young!" Cissy whispered. "You were, what, twenty-five by that tim, just like me. I'm so sorry. I knew that you..."

"He's nothing but a coward who was unable to fulfill his mission." Bella said mercilessly, glaring at her brother-in-law. "When we all did what we were told, he just sat there and watched like the scared kid he is."

Narcissa wanted to snap back at her sister for that, but she felt that Rabastan's grip around her tightened. Between Rab and Cissy passed a wordless message and he smiled sadly at her_. _

Years ago, on their trial for torturing Alice and Frank Longbottom, she had the chance to make up something about one of the four people that were to be left in Azkaban for life. Just for one. Bella refused when her younger sister proposed that to her. Rodolphus wouldn't leave his wife to save his life. She didn't knew Barty Croch junior well enough to waste her only chance to_ him_.

But Rabastan still had a chance. Until the last moment, he was hesitating between the prison and the fear that one day, the Dark Lord would appear again and that he would be punished. Narcissa was trying to convince him that this was stupid, but he didn't seem able to leave his brother in prison. He was afraid, she could tell. He was her best friend. But he didn't give up.

_I knew it,_ she thought bitterly._ I could save him if I tried hard enough._

But she knew that she would never be able to forgive herself for saving him from prison instead of her sister. No matter that her sister didn't actually want to be saved. It still wasn't the right thing to do.

"It's alright." he whispered. "I know. I understand."

"Hands down, Lestange."

Narcissa stepped back when she heard Lucius' cold voice behind them. He was going down the stairs in front of the Manor. Despite the harsh words, the man was smiling at them all.

"So you did it." was all he said, then shaked Rodolphus' hand and nodded silently at all the other men, as if all of that was just a meeting of old friends brought together. He seemed happy to see them, though, even if he looked a bit scared. Narcissa could understand him - he was happy to meet his friends he hadn't seen so many years, but he was scared what their returning meant to him and his family. But suddenly what he said caught her attention.

"Wait." Cissy tried to keep her voice down, but the anger somehow showed itself in her words. "Are you trying to tell me that you knew about all of this? And didn't tell me anything about it?"

"Of course he didn't tell you, and of course he knew." Bella sounded amused; that familiar note of dark humor in her voice was strangely comforting to Narcissa. Sometimes she thought that her sister is utterly crazy, but she had truly missed her all this years. "All the old Death Eaters were into the plan. He just chose not to mess with us. The same good old Lucius, trying to stay out of trouble."

Lucius frowned at her. Ever since they had first met each other in school - almost an eternity ago - they despised each other as much as two human beings could. Obviously nothing had changed with age.

"I wasn't stupid enough. I don't want my family on the run, you know." he said and glared at Bellatrix once again. "I was just... trying to keep everyone safe."

"Yeah, sure you were." Bella said and snorted, as if it wasn't a big deal, but Narcissa could hear how haughily she sounded.

"Are you calling me a coward, Bellatrix?" he asked with a sweet smile. Narcissa chuckled; a little girlish sound that made the two Lestrange brothers to laugh.

"And what if I am?" her sister asked. Cissy rolled her eyes. Challenges. That was what Bella lived for.

Rab rolled his eyes and smiled at Cissy and winked at her. As if they were still at school and their friends had a fight that amused them. _A galleon for Malfoy. He'll hex her any minute. Deal, Black?_ he would say. _Deal._ she would answer and they would watch them fight.

With a sigh, Cissy stood between them and pointed at the house, trying to hide her smile.

"Get inside, children. I'm freezing."

* * *

**Author's notes: I have no idea why exactly I wrote this, but I just had the idea, and, well, I apparently can't just live the Black sisters live in peace. And also, I wanted to show a brighter side over the Death Eaters when they're already grown up.**

**Oh, and by the way, I know, red haired Lestranges is not exactly how it's supposed to be, but for some reason, that's how I always imagined it.**

**The song used is _Turn Loose the Mermaids _by _Nightwish._**


End file.
